My Testimony- Part One

I have heard many testimonies. A few speakers have come to share their testimonies at church, and when I was younger and spent my summers at Bible Camp, there was always a night for people to voluntarily share their testimonies. These testimonies were always so interesting and never failed to include obstacles such as drug use, parents who opposed religion, homelessness, addiction…and the list continues. What I consider my obstacles to living a life for God are so small in comparison, so I would never share mine. People have asked me how I got saved, but I would always give the Reader’s Digest version until now.
I was lucky to have been born into a Christian family, and one that is well-known in my area. There was never any question to the fact that I would grow up with Christian values and morals. The summer right before grade two (I’m a fall baby, so I was still six) my church at the time decided to have a week-long camp. It was there that I heard the story of how God sent His son to earth to save us from our transgressions and that we had to let Him into our hearts. I remember thinking about it all week and that Friday feeling like I couldn’t wait any longer and I had to ask the Lord into my heart NOW. I sat in the field in front the church and prayed. I was so happy and I told my parents right away and wrote the date down in my Bible.
If only it were that simple. I wish the story would end there, but it doesn’t. I think a testimony ends when a person can say that not only did they ask the Lord into their hearts, but that they began to live the life of a born-again Christian. The next few years of my life were uneventful. I went to church every Sunday, went to AWANA every Thursday night, and spent the week memorizing my verses. I had some amazing Christian friends and everything was just peachy. In the days before religion was taken out of the schools, in grade four I brought in my AWANA book and vest and shared with the class what I believed.
The year I was twelve was the year I can pinpoint as the year I started to grow-up and stopped being a child. My paternal grandfather died at the end of grade seven and he wasn’t saved, and I can remember vividly my parents trying to explain to my sister and me why he wasn’t going to Heaven. Up until that point, I think I had naively assumed everyone I loved was joining me in Heaven. That had a big impact on me about the importance of sharing the love of our Lord. That same year, a new family joined our congregation, and I immediately became best friends with the daughter closest in age to me (who I shall refer to as “E”). E and I shared a love of horses, books (I think we read “Love Comes Softly” so many times the cover fell off) and, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ. We did EVERYTHING together and would even write letters to each other on the days we had to spend apart and sign them “your horse pal in Christ”. Looking back now, I realize that I was so concerned with my friendship, swim practice and horses that I was blissfully unaware of tensions rising in the church. E’s family had some very different views than what we were used to, and slowly they began to turn members of the chapel against one another. Long story short, there was a huge split in the church that resulted in half the members of the congregation leaving. My family was one of the ones that left. Since my family “sided against” E’s family, our friendship was over. I was too young at the time to really understand what was happening, but in hindsight, I can see that this was a fundamental moment for me. My family had a hard time finding a church we liked as much as our old one, so we sort of floated for a year. This left me with no solid church and no real fellowship at a time when I was getting ready to enter high school. High school is always such a big change, and having a solid Christian background is so essential for a Christian to manage to stay afloat. The split in my old church left me with a lot of bitterness towards the church, and I honestly thought that if Christianity involved back-stabbing, gossiping, tearing friendships apart and changing important beliefs, then I wanted none of it. I already got enough of that at school. I kept going to church because that was what was expected of me from my family, but my heart was completely out of it.
Things started to turn around when I was in grade eleven. My family finally found a permanent church, the one my mom grew up in and my grandmother still attended. We hadn’t originally considered it because it’s a fairly long drive from our house. My grandmother began to teach my sister and I, and I slowly started to warm up again to the idea of loving being a Christian and wanting to follow the Lord, and let Him lead my life. Not completely, but it was a start. The only negative side to our new church was that my sister and I were the only two around each other’s age. We’re three years apart, and I’m the older one, so it was really hard for me to find Christian friends. At this time, my only Christian friend was my best friend, Chelsea, but she didn’t go to the same church as me.


...Part Two to come soon!